[PLUG-TALK] Any decent banks without third party trackers?

[Denis Heidtmann]

It seems to me that the bank has all the financial information relative to
your accounts.  Are they using trackers to avoid laws prohibiting them from
selling the information they have?  Or are the trackers correlating bank
data with other activity in the browser to commercial advantage?  If the
latter, does the use of such things as ghostery meaningfully stop them?

I also wonder how you found out that FirstTechFederal recently added the
trackers?  Did ghostery tell you?

I agree this is a despicable practice, and yet pervasive.  Since there are
big businesses built around this data-mining, what might they be doing to
defeat ghostery or similar techniques?

-Denis

On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 4:41 PM, Tomas Kuchta <tomas.kuchta.lists at gmail.com>
wrote:

> There are a few aspect I am trying to address by moving bank.
>
> I am not trying to hide myself from First Tech, obviously. I just do not
> want to have my financial data exposed to someone else the bank picks.
>
> I also want to vote with my wallet against this despicable behavior. I
> asked the bank to stop and disable the tracking on my account. They will
> not do that, of course. So, I will move the bank, thus provide meaningful
> feedback by my action.
>
> The third parties collect and analyse my mouse moves, what I type into
> what field, generally what I do when I pay bills, transfer funds, download
> tax forms etc.
>
> Over a few months they will have pretty good idea what my financial
> life/power is like. Changes in employment, retirement, kids moving, me
> moving, taking holidays, being sick, depressed, ... - all this leave pretty
> recognizable patterns in our financial lifes.
>
> Wiping out cookies, cache, etc. will not do any good as they get unique
> identifier from the bank. All that is needed to identify me is to one day
> Google something up from the same IP address. Or write about this on PLUG.
>
> So, if I can find decent bank without similar trackers, that will be
> great. If not, I will move the accounts and investments anyway and
> diversify.
>
> I refuse to behave like millions harmed by Wells Fargo or US Bank and
> continue to bank with them, do nothing.
>
> So, please try to understand my quest to find a decent bank who just does
> banking and keeps their mouth shut about their customer's business.
>
> Tomas
>
> On Jan 20, 2018 3:07 PM, "Denis Heidtmann" <denis.heidtmann at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Due to my complete lack of understanding how browsers and tracking works,
> I wonder:  how is it possible to log onto a bank's site and not have your
> activity there being kept track of?  Or are you just insuring that your
> browser has no record of it?  And Tomas, what identification information do
> you believe is sent along with the banking activity?  What legal limits are
> there on the type of identification information that the bank can provide
> to others?  And how did you become aware of the 3 trackers?
>
> Thanks,
> -Denis
>
> On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 1:41 PM, Paul Heinlein <heinlein at madboa.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 20 Jan 2018, Tomas Kuchta wrote:
>>
>> Can anyone recommend decent bank operating in PDX and does not use third
>>> party trackers inside logged-in web banking session? I am asking here,
>>> because anybody else I asked around responded - what's tracker; no way
>>> banks could do that; ...
>>>
>>> I am currently with First Tech and they recently started to use 3
>>> trackers sending any banking activity to Google, Ensighteen and New Relic.
>>>
>>> Bank of America is also sending logged-in banking activity to Google and
>>> someone else ...
>>>
>>
>> In the grand PLUG tradition, I'll answer a question you didn't ask: How
>> to I minimize exposure of commercial web activity?
>>
>> My answer is that all such activity gets done in a Chrome "incognito"
>> window. I close all other Chrome windows, open an incognito window,
>> transact my business, and then close Chrome. In true fact, I reserve Chrome
>> exclusively for this sort of work, using Firefox and Safari for day-to-day
>> browsing.
>>
>> Again, that doesn't answer your question -- but it was easier for me to
>> arrange browser usage than it would be to change financial institutions.
>>
>> --
>> Paul Heinlein
>> heinlein at madboa.com
>> 45°38' N, 122°6' W
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>>
>
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